Gardening Part 1 - Why Garden?

Last year at this time our house had a For Sale sign in the front yard and a sad lackluster garden in the back yard. When The Lord made it clear that we were to stay put here for a while longer I began making mental plans for our garden this Spring. The Principal has been so busy with school and work but has still managed to squeeze in a few weekend/evening projects to make our garden the best it has ever been. Over the next few weeks, I want to share with you some of our methods and projects to encourage and inspire you in your efforts or even better to get you out there and playing in the dirt for the first time!! Today, I want to share with you the reasons we choose to invest our time, money and labor into our garden. Gardening is a blessing on so many levels it is really hard for me to decide what my favorite element or greatest blessing is. We have over the past 2 or 3 years been slowly creating a lovely little sanctuary in what was just an empty patch of grass when we bought our home 8 years ago.

We really enjoy our morning coffee and quiet time on our screened in patio. We love to get out there in early in the mornings and watch the antics of the birds and the many rabbits that poke around in the field behind us. We have bird houses, feeders and a bird bath which my guys gifted me for Mother's Day several years ago so we see plenty of activity from our feathered friends. We feed the birds the crusts left behind Wonder Boy's toast (he doesn't do crust and I'm not wasting homemade goodness!!) and anything else that may be bird worthy that does not get consumed. A few slices of staling cornbread provided much enjoyment and antics for us this past Sunday as we spent the afternoon playing board games on the patio - it had me singing "Mama's little birdies love cornbread cornbread, Mama's little birdies love stale cornbread" - this kind of thing - songs sung to the key of life happen often in this house - try it - it's great stress reduction!! But I digress...forgive me while I find my way back from the rabbit trail I was on..... The garden....It all started in a garden so it stand to reason that I always feel close to God when I am in the garden, how can you watch the birds, rabbits, the amazing-ness of a seed that turns into a plant and then ultimately provision and not be drawn directly back to The Creator of it all? I am humbled by the intricacy with which He weaves and works into even the smallest details! I love to witness the process of seed to plant to harvest - you cannot imagine the giddy delight we all had when we saw the first teeny tiny baby cutie patootie grapes on the vine a few weeks ago, it was downright goofy (there was no song for this - sorry).
As homeschoolers, there are endless opportunities to teach in the garden. I think a child who is able to put a seed in the dirt and then eat something he has nurtured and grown will forever be connected to God who created it, the earth that brings it forth and will have an awareness and respect for conversing and not wasting the provision that we have. A child who works in the garden gains a perspective that would not otherwise come easily in our packaged, constantly product consuming and overall thoughtless society (oops...soapbox). Even a very young child can garner some basic values of work = provision through a little time spent watering, weeding and caring for something alive and live giving.
The bounty of the harvest is naturally the ultimate goal. I would never have been drawn to learn to can, dehydrate and preserve to the degree that I have if I had not been involved in the process of producing the food that was harvested. There is such pleasure at sitting down to the family meal table and enjoying the fruits of your labor together as a family. The taste is so much better than anything that comes from a grocery store and you know what it has or more importantly hasn't been sprayed with. A garden is a labor of love in many ways, from running out to protect the young plants when a hail storm came suddenly, to being out there in the dark with flash lights covering the same tender plants when an unanticipated frost was forecast.
As a family we have worked together and shared the joys and disappointments when things have not gone as planned. This is the stuff that makes family family isn't it? This was not something I learned as a child, but oh the blessings of knowing these pleasures as a wife and mother are a treasure to me! Over the next few weeks, I will share with you about square foot gardening, herb gardening (Oh! How I love love love herbs), harvesting rainwater as well as some of the 'structures' that we have built to make our garden work for us.....please join me and please, if I have touched on something you want to know more about by all means ask....let me know what you are interested in hearing more about!
I am here for you!

We Interrupt This Blog.......

If you are here and if you are reading this, my thanks to you! I have been a completly shameful blogger for far too long now. Life seems to have consumed much of my time recently - can you imagine?? And truthfully, I am trying to figure out what I want to do with my blogging. I started up a new blog with a new plan and ran into one technical glitch after another and so I have done nothing on either one. The thing is I need to write and so as I figure out where and what I hope you will pop in and check on me and leave a comment if you feel led and help sway me in some kind of direction!!;-)
For now I will leave you with this....Life is busy, we are finishing 5th grade, doing our first formal testing this week - PASS. The Principal is taking his final test today in his 3rd class (yes he is back in school- everyone but me is getting a formal education!!Although I am probably learning more than both of them combined!!), the 2012 Spring gardening season has begun! We have planted blueberry bushes, grapes, strawberries, peppers, herbs o' plenty and, just yesterday I ordered from 2 seed catalogs and have all kinds of wonderful exotic beans and some herbs, cucumbers and squash coming!
WonderBoy is about to turn 11, is preparing to be baptized later this month and just began guitar lessons, oh and is only a few scant inches away from looking down at me!!
I am trying to be faithful to get some exercise and have been finding some pleasure (it is exercise afterall) walking with Leslie Sansone and her Walk at Home series. While I have not been blogging, I have been online some and have become a Pinterest junkie- sigh! Often heard at the dinner table in our house lately - "Is this a Pinterest meal?" Pause....Several Weeks Pass.......Resume The previous portion of this post was written almost 2 months ago and saved for review....I just reviewed it....really! So here is the update to the update as it were....I have come to the conclusion that the time is not now for the new blog.....later maybe but not now. I still need to write so I will do that here until the Lord leads me otherwise. Fifth grade is complete (insert Hallelujah chorus here) although we will work on finishing a few things that we began midway through the school year and would like to have completed before 6th grade begins - namely Language Arts Lifepacs. The results from the PASS tests came back a little over a week ago and the good news is I have not failed my child in educating him. He is doing just fine and while he iscored a little lower than we would have liked in one area he is reading and comprehending well above his grade level. If he can do this I am not at all concerned - besides which - he tests poorly - I have seen this time and time again. The Principal is one assignement away from complelting Business Communications - he has done so well in all his classes so far - straight A's - I am so proud of him! He sets a wonderful example for WonderBoy academically - and in so many other ways as well!! The garden is planted and growing - I would run out and take up to the moment photos right now to share with you but it is raining - oh how happy that will make all the beautiful things growing out there. Photos soon - ok? We have built several gardne structures that I will be happy to share with you in hopes that they may insprire or assist in your gardening efforts. So....that is where we are. I really just wanted to get something posted this morning - it being Monday and getting the week off to a good start, typically if I start well on Monday I see better success rates later in the week. I find it very difficult to publish a post without a photo or visual of some sort, so in the interest of satisfying my quirk...... I was inside getting dinner together one evening several weeks ago, WonderBoy was outside assaulting our blooming dogwood tree....so do you get angry? I chose to make it a teachable moment....lots of those around here. Life is Good! God is Good-er!!

Change of Address

I would like to cordially invite you to visit me at my new address, beginning January 1st, 2012 I will be blogging at Mama Leisha Ministries. I have been tossing around some ideas of changing a few things for a while now and the ushering in of a new year seems to be a most appropriate time to initiate those changes. So please ...come see me...it would be so very lonely without you!!

Can You Help a Girl Out??

I need you.....my neighbor needs you.....her daughter was clearing out a junk drawer in the kitchen and came across this handy little device/tool/gizmo. She took it to her mother (my across the street neighbor who is a wise wise woman in her early 70's who could run circles around me with her knowledge of all things home and hearth) for identification purposes. They spent some time trying to figure it out and came up empty, then the other day when WonderBoy ran some bananas I had picked up for her while I was getting groceries, she sent him back with this......

I know one of you knows, maybe even has one in your kitchen drawer at this very moment. We have our theories and I am so curious to see if we were anywhere near right. I personally think it is a butter thingie for slicing and serving and the little notch on the end works to knock the butter slice off the blade and make serving easier. I know I have seen one of these somewhere, but cannot recall where or why.....help??...please;-) My plan is to wrap it up and run it back across the street with what ever it needs to function and see if she can figure it out then. I'll keep you posted ;-) Oh and one last thing - her daughter 'thinks' it is an old Pampered Chef product if that helps......Thanks so much in advance! You're the best!!!

God's Wisdom For Mother's by Jack Countryman

The title of the book immediately got my attention - as a Mother I daily feel the sometimes overwhelming need for God's wisdom! I received a complimentary copy of this lovely little book through Booksneeze to review....It is what I would term a devotional/gift type book. It is small and compact, easy to pick up and pull nuggets from when you have a quiet moment, something to keep in the car, by the bed for a free minute or two of refreshing or encouragement opportunity presents itself. The book is divided into sections which include; God's Wisdom, The Crown of an Excellent Mother, God's Wisdom with Children, God Teaches a Mother to...., Walk by His Word, God Delights in Mothers Who Are..., God Walks with Mothers, God Encourages Each Mother to..., God Teaches a Mother How to..., and God Gives a Mother....Each section contains scripture that relates to the theme of the section, this could also be used as a study tool or daily devotional which is how I used it in going through the book and it worked well in that application for me.
Designed to encourage us in our spiritual calling of motherhood, this is a sweet tool to have at the ready and would make a lovely gift for mothers of all ages and stages!

One Thousand Gifts......I Dare You

I had an amazon order to place a few months back and needed just a few more dollars to qualify for free shipping, of course it was a no brainer there was something that I needed to have and a book had to be it!! I had been hearing and reading some wonderful rumblings about One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are so couple that with the fact that dear Ann is a Canadian gal, well my choice was made. The book arrived several months ago and I am only now reading it. I met a woman in church this past Sunday who happened to be sitting next to me and we were politely chatting prior to service beginning, she was in town visiting from Kansas and when I mentioned something in conversation about being originally from Toronto, she perked up and said "Oh I am reading a book by a Canadian woman" she could not recall the name but I knew instantly that it was the same book I was reading and asked if it was the one with the woman holding a bird's nest on the front? "Yes! That's it!" I told her I had started it a little over a week ago and was reading it as part of my quiet time each morning - "Oh wow! That is exactly what I am doing too!" Well worship started and the conversation was forced to end.....
I am less than halfway through the book, but already feel myself changing and am up and out of bed each morning looking forward to the insight and vision that Ann shares with such raw grace and beauty. I have started my list and am opening myself in a new way to the Lord each morning, expectant, grateful and awestruck in ways I have not been for a very long time. I am not yet sure what this will look like or where it will take me but I have a sense of excitement in it that I can't quite put a name to. This is already a renewal and a joyous refreshing to my soul!
You know dear ones, that I am not inclined to keep good things to myself so rather than wait to finish this book, which truthfully I am in no hurry to finish, I am enjoying the savoring far too much to rush it, I had to share it now and encourage you, get a piece of paper right now and write #1 on it and begin......I double dog dare you!!

Have you read this book? Do you have a list? What number are you on? I would love to hear about your experiences......also if you want more take a minute to stop by Ann's blog where is all began.....A Holy Experience is a whole other adventure!

Father's Day

Like Mother's Day, Father's Day brings much emotion for many people, regret, sadness at the passing of a lost loved one, for each of us it means something different. I am so blessed to have a man in my life now that I can honor on Father's Day. I do not know my father, have never met him and know only very little about him so this is not a day that I have childhood memories or traditions built on. I could ramble ad nauseum about how wonderful and what a blessing The Principal is to our family and my son in particular. I will spare you. I did want to take a moment to publicly thank my sweet husband for the man he is and the living example of what a godly husband and father looks like in his daily walk with God. Thank You Lord for giving The Principal to us that WonderBoy and I might know what it is to have the love of a good man with a kind and humble heart in our lives.

Sweetheart, thank you for taking on the role of father with such grace, character and honor.
Happy Father's Day
I love you deeply!!